Yoga to improve Crossfit!?! Who would have ever thought that would be helpful?!?!
COUGH, COUGH.
We know CrossFit Games champ Graham Holmberg can deal with the unknown and unknowable. But Holmberg also enjoys dealing with the unknown when participating in yoga classes led by his fiancée, Savanna Wilson. For the co-owner of Rogue Fitness/CrossFit Columbus, it’s refreshing to be able to stop planning workouts for 45 minutes while following a series of movements created by someone else.
Holmberg uses yoga to improve his flexibility, but he also uses it to work on his concentration and intensity during focused movement. Even so, he believes the flexibility benefits are unmistakeable, and flexibility is one of CrossFit’s 10 general physical skills—even if many ignore it completely.
Stretching sucks. It does. There, it's been said. You can't brag about your best stretching time, you don't get to write your stretch PR on the wall, and there is no immediate "Fran"-like gratification that you are really tough. And despite the fact that flexibility is one of the ten CrossFit pillars of complete, well-balanced fitness, increasing flexibility potential remains the ungreased squeaky wheel of most athletes' training programming. According to the ten general physical skills list, flexibility is allegedly as important as power or strength. So why don't we take it more seriously? Because, typically, we simply fail to frame flexibility in terms that are important to us: increasing performance.
Stop kidding yourself. Lacking flexibility in crucial areas has a crushing impact on your athletic abilities; to say nothing of the host of pains and problems that inflexibility predisposes you to. If you know you have tight hips, calves, hamstrings, quads, thoracic spine, or shoulders and aren't actively, aggressively striving to fix them, then you must be afraid of having a bigger squat, faster rowing splits, or a more explosive second pull. Or, you must be very lazy. Because if you are tight and a CrossFitter, you are missing a huge opportunity to get better, stronger and faster. Simply put, not stretching is like not flossing, and the results are not pretty. There are many areas of restriction in the typical athlete, but it makes sense to begin a discussion about flexibility and performance at perhaps the most commonly neglected and profoundly underaddressed area of the body, the hamstrings. The goals of this article are to help you understand how hamstring restriction impedes performance and function, learn to identify tight hamstrings with a few simple assessment tools, and above all, know how to address the problem.
originally written by,
Kelly Starrett
1. Each competitor drinks four cans of beer and runs four laps on a track (Start - beer/lap, beer/lap, beer/lap, beer/lap - finish). 2. Beer must be consumed before the lap is begun, within the transition area which is the 10 meter zone before the start/finish line on a 400m track. 3. The race begins with the drinking of the first beer in the last meter of the transition zone to ensure the comptitors run a complete mile (1609 meters). 4. Women also drink four beers in four laps (past rule lists only required ladies to drink three beers). 5. Competitors must drink canned beer and the cans should not be less than 355ml (the standard can volume) or 12oz (the imperial equivalent). Bottles may be substituted for cans as long as they are at least 12 oz (355 ml) in volume. 6. No specialized cans or bottles may be used that give an advantage by allowing the beer to pour at a faster rate. ie "super mega mouth cans" or "wide mouth bottles" are prohibited. 7. Beer cans must not be tampered with in any manner, ie. no shotgunning or puncturing of the can except for opening the can by the tab at the top. The same applies with bottles - no straws or other aids are allowed in order to aid in the speed of pouring. 8. Beer must be a minimum of 5% alcohol by volume. Hard ciders and lemonades will not suffice. The beer must be a fermented alcoholic beverage brewed from malt and flavored with hops. For an abbreviated list of valid beers and exceptions, click here. 9. Each beer can must not be opened until the competitor enters the transition zone on each lap. 10. Competitors who vomit before they finish the race must complete one penalty lap at the end of the race (immediately after the completion of their 4th lap). Note: Vomitting more than once during the race still requires only one penalty lap at the end.
The facts on high intensity, short duration, "Tabata" intervals.
The Tabata protocol is a high-intensity training regimen that produces remarkable results. A Tabata workout (also called a Tabata sequence) is an interval training cycle of 20 seconds of maximum intensity exercise, followed by 10 seconds of rest, repeated without pause 8 times for a total of four minutes. In a group context, you can keep score by counting how many lifts/jumps/whatever you do in each of the 20 second rounds. The round with the smallest number is your score.
Credit for this simple and powerful training method belongs to its namesake, Dr. Izumi Tabata and a team of researchers from the National Institute of Fitness and Sports in Tokyo, Japan. Their groundbreaking 1996 study, published in the journal Medicine and Science in Sports & Exercise, provided documented evidence concerning the dramatic physiological benefits of high-intensity intermittent training. After just 6 weeks of testing, Dr. Tabata noted a 28% increase in anaerobic capacity in his subjects, along with a 14% increase in their ability to consume oxygen (V02Max). These results were witnessed in already physically fit athletes. The conclusion was that just four minutes of Tabata interval training could do more to boost aerobic and anaerobic capacity than an hour of endurance exercise
